Warren, as usual, is on top of it:He may not have drained a swamp, but President George W. Bush at least pulled the plug on some very old bathwater with his June 24 policy speech on the Middle East. This becomes increasingly evident as the Israel/Palestine issue disappears from the headlines of the Western media. Yasser Arafat, and the terrorist organizations working among the Palestinians within Gaza and the West Bank, have lost their purchase on international public opinion. This is because Mr. Bush has succeeded in delegitimizing them...
Now Mr. Arafat, who used the Oslo accords in 1993 to get himself back into the middle of things, when he and his Palestine Liberation Organization had been effectively exiled and sidelined in Tunis, is trying at the ripe old age of 73 to perform the same trick again. He spontaneously declared his support for Mr. Bush's initiative, whatever it was; he has been telling every visitor who will listen that the suicide bombers have been trained and sent by the ayatollahs of Iran; that they are financed and supported from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan; that something must be done about all those Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon and Syria. In other words, ratting on his allies in the hope of switching sides. There's a lot of thought and a lot of political guile that's gone into formulating this policy shift. If Bush can pull it off — and there are no guarantees, but it's looking better all the time — I'll be waiting to hear all the partisans dwelling on his "lack of intellect" apologizing. I'll be waiting, but I won't hear anything. |